3 Ton Air Conditioners

Air Conditioner Condenser

The three main components of an air conditioner are the compressor, the condenser and the evaporator. The compressor and the condenser is located on the outside portion of the air conditioner while the evaporator is located inside the house. Sometimes the evaporator is also located as part of the furnace which helps in heating the house. AC condensers are grouped into categories depending on how it rejects the heat to the surrounding air. They are the following:

Mostly in residential air conditioners and commercial air conditioning unit, the air cooled condensers are used. The air cooled condensers use outside air as the medium to reject the heat absorbed by the indoor air conditioning units.

To be more precise air conditioner condensers are heat exchanger devices and it has a similar operating principle to that of an evaporator. The condenser rejects the heat to the outside air while the evaporator absorbs heat from the space it needs to cool. In case, of air conditioners it is the inside air. It is the job of the condenser to take the high-pressure and high-temperature refrigerant gas from the compressor and convert it into high-pressure and high-temperature liquid refrigerant.

As far as the construction of the condensers are concerned, they are also constructed as a series of tubes with fins around them. Now let us have a look at the functionality of the condensers. The working fluid of the air conditioner arrives at the compressor as a cool and a low-pressure gas. The compressor then squeezes the fluid. As a result, the molecules of the fluid come close to each other. Hence, the fluid has higher energy and higher temperature. The working fluid in turn leaves the compressor as a hot and high pressure gas and then flows into the condenser. The fins in the condenser help the heat to dissipate faster. When finally the working fluid leaves the condenser it gets converted to a gas from a liquid state and the temperature of the liquid is much cooler. Then the liquid passes into the evaporator through a very narrow hole.

Hence, it is clear that condensers play an important role in keeping you cool during the hot summers. However, like any other parts of the air conditioners even condensers are prone to certain problems that needs to be taken care of. Condensers have chances of external blockages from things like leaves and dust. In such cases cleaning the condenser with water and soap can be of great help. However, there can be severe problems of the condenser like internal blockage which results from the compressor failure. This happens because metal particles and other debris immediately moves into the condenser after the compressor failure and blocks the very narrow passage of the condenser. In some cases it might be possible to remove the debris from the condenser while in other instances there may be no other option but to replace the condenser completely.

Last but not the least, conduct timely maintenance of your air conditioner so that you are not shocked with an untimely damage.